If You Lived Here (42 page)

His clinic has shiny marble floors. The reception desk separates the medical staff from the waiting room, just like in clinics in the States. In the waiting room, a Western couple, an Indian woman, and a Vietnamese mother and her children sat on the dark blue upholstered armchairs. Another Vietnamese child played with a puzzle in a corner filled with toys. “Can I help you?” A young woman behind the counter smiled professionally.

“I need to see Dr. Dario Penzi,” I told her. I was out of breath, sweaty, unable to remember why I’d come.

“Do you have an appointment?” “Can I use your bathroom?”

The receptionist pointed toward a door on the other side of the waiting area. Her eyes had already refocused on her computer screen. I made my way across the room, opened the door of the bathroom, and locked myself inside. Turning on the water, I splashed my face. It took a long time before I began to feel cooler and, even then, my skin in the mirror looked red and splotchy and my hair stuck to my neck in little patches of sweat. If I’d known a back door to get out of that place, I would have used it. I grabbed a paper towel and rubbed it under my arms to absorb the sweat. I reached to the back of my head, yanked the hair elastic off my ponytail, turned upside down and tried to dry my hair by swishing around and letting the air flow through it. Then I stood up, fluffed it out,

and pulled it back once more. I patted my face, splashed it again, trying anything to get the red out. My mother would have scolded me. Mai, she would have said, Vietnamese ladies wear hats.

Finally, after ten minutes, I was dry, at least, and paler. I walked back to the desk and the receptionist looked up again, waiting.

“I need see Dr. Penzi.” This time I said it in English.

“If you don’t have an appointment, it won’t be possible.” “Not for appointment. I’m his translator.”

She looked at me suspiciously.

“When the regular one was busy. In Hoa Binh.”

The receptionist shook her head, but then, from behind me, I heard his voice. “Mai?”

He stood in the doorway, looking at me. I’d never seen him in a lab coat before. He looked like someone on
ER.

“Hey,” I said.

“What are you doing here?” “I saw my father.”

He smiled and walked over. He set his hand against my back and we both leaned against the counter to face the receptionist. “How many more patients today, Thuy?” he asked.

Thuy clicked across the computer screen. “Three. Mrs. Seth. Mr. and Mrs. Miller. Tra Bingham and her little boys.”

He glanced out toward the waiting room, took in its inhabitants, then looked down at me. His hand remained on my back. “Can you wait?” His voice was just above a whisper.

“I just wanted ask about the medicine for emphysema. And also, about maybe you examine my father. But no problem. I just call you tomorrow.”

“No. Wait. Half an hour. Are you in a hurry?” I shook my head.

“Wait.” He turned, took a clipboard off the reception desk, and, without looking back at me, walked over to his patients. “Mrs. Seth?” he asked. The Indian woman stood up, he opened the door for her, and they disappeared down the hallway of the clinic. Behind her reception desk, Thuy had already begun clicking away again at her computer. I walked

over to the waiting area and took a seat, picked up a month-old copy of
The Far Eastern Economic Review,
and began to page through it. In the corner where the toys lay, the little boy squealed. He had completed his puzzle.

At five forty-five, only one woman remained behind the reception desk. The other staff had pulled on their sunglasses and hats, hung their purses over their shoulders, and called out their good-byes. From where I sat, I could see them rev their smart little motorbikes and ride away. If I had stayed in Hanoi, I might have had a job like theirs.

Dario reappeared out of the clinic and walked the Vietnamese woman and her sons to the door. “With a sinus infection, please be careful about the smog,” he told them. The mother nodded. In her hands, she carried two bottles of medicine. He opened the door for them and let them out, then turned and walked toward me.

I was cooler now but only slightly more relaxed. He stood above me with his hands on his hips. “You saw him?”

I nodded. I couldn’t think of a thing to say that would explain it. “Come.” He motioned toward the door that led into the clinic. I followed him through it, down a long hallway, past a technician bent over blood samples. We walked into his office and he closed the door. It was a sunny room, full of bookshelves, with windows facing a small pond behind the building. At this hour, the sunlight streamed in sideways, making the whole room yellow. “Will you drink some water?” he asked. “You look so hot.”

I shrugged, glancing around the room. I had no reason to be here, really. He pulled a bottle of water out of a small refrigerator, opened it, and handed it to me. I stood there in the middle of his office, drinking from the bottle. The doctor leaned back against the edge of his desk, watching me. “Can you tell me about it?” he asked.

I shook my head. I offered him the water. “You want a sip?”

He accepted the bottle and started to put his mouth to it. Then, changing his mind, he set it down on the desk beside him. He leaned forward, took my hand, and pulled me closer.

I have tried to remember when I felt this way before. Only with Khoi.

Or maybe not with Khoi. It’s really quite hard to remember. For so long, I sifted through memories so precise that I believed I could feel the breath on them. But maybe I just imagined it. I think of the pencil drawings and photographs of the ancestors that my mother used to place on the altar in our house. The pictures perfectly captured the likenesses of those peo-ple’s faces, their eyes, their grins, but the people themselves never moved again, or talked, or breathed. Hannah Ellis’s drawing of my mother didn’t change anything, but seeing my father did. Nothing makes the past alive again, and nothing can change it. Change only happens now, or tomorrow, or next year, or next week. Why has it taken me so long to understand that?

Dario looked down at me. “Hello,” I told him.

He laughed. “Hello.”

He kissed my hand. Then he lowered it and let his thumb move up my fingers, along my open palm, and press against the veins of my wrist.

“What?”

“I’m feeling your heartbeat,” he said. “My heart?”

He let go of my hand, lifted his stethoscope from around his neck, and placed it in my ears. “You, listen,” he suggested, setting the end of the stethoscope against my shirt. “Do you hear it?”

I shook my head.

He put his fingers on the top button of my shirt. “Is it okay?” “Yes.”

He unclasped the button. Then his hand slid the stethoscope beneath the fabric and laid it firmly against my chest. “Now?”

I closed my eyes and listened. I had never heard my heart before and I was surprised by its steadiness, its persistent beat. How faithful it had always been. Ignored and unencouraged, it kept beating. What a wonder. Even dead, I was alive.

While I listened to my heart, his cool hands moved across my face, down my neck, and along the ridge of my shoulders beneath my shirt. I felt his lips against my forehead. My hand reached up to touch his cheek.

That might have been the moment I gave myself to this man, but this morning, in Anh’s café, I had given myself to him already.

I’m just a little bit flustered and tipsy by the time I finally say good night to Martin and make it to my room. In the darkness, Shelley sits up on her elbows and looks at me.

“I saw him,” I tell her.

In the dim glow that filters in from the street, her expression looks as peaceful and content as a Buddha’s, but I suspect it’s merely an interesting trick of the light. “I’m a mother now,” she says. Her voice sounds rough and tired.

I sit down next to her on her bed and smooth her curls. “Congratula-tions,” I whisper.

She lowers her head to the pillow, reaches up and takes my hand. “I worked so hard to get him.”

“You got him.” “No. Martin.”

My hand in hers turns firmer. I could encourage her with some predic-tion about Martin eventually warming to her and Hai Au, but I couldn’t make it sound convincing. “Come on!” I tell her. “It too late to think about that now.”

“Oh, Mai,” she moans. “I can say it, can’t I?”

“When you drink down a glass of beer in Vietnam, you say ‘One hundred percent!’ ” I tell her. “You don’t say ‘Sixty percent!’ Or ‘Eighty-seven percent!’ ”

“One hundred percent,” Shelley says. And then, “Ninety-two percent.”

19
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Shelley

ai Au is
a traitor. At times, he has clutched me.
Clutched
me. At times, lying in his crib for a nap, he has kept his arm in the air for fifteen minutes just to grip the end of my shirt while he falls asleep. I am

the only person in the world, other than Minh, whom he would allow to hold his bottle while he drank from it. I will not say that I was cocky about his affections, but I did feel enormously relieved by them. My boy was ready to come home with me. He demonstrated that at the aborted G and R, when he screamed after Minh lifted him from my arms. He told me so that morning. He was ready.

And now, whom does he scream for in this new life? Whom does he cling to? This child, who absorbed my attentions so calmly, so willingly, in the orphanage; this child, who rejects them so absolutely now, far away from the only home he has known or counted on? This child. Whom does he turn to in his hour of deepest agony, and terror, and need?

Martin.

I hold Hai Au in my arms, pacing. I try to console him myself. I stand by the window, pointing to a bicycle, a tree, a light. It doesn’t matter.

He screams. Tears smear his cheeks. His nose produces a clear stream of liquid, which pours down over his lips, into his mouth, and pools there, mixing with saliva, before it overflows again, covers his chin and separates into thin threads that attach to his shoulder, his chest, my hair. His head bobs back and forth, up and down. It’s hard to believe that such a small package can emit such energy. He’s nuclear. He seems to understand that the move, this time, is real.

I try: “Shhh. Shhh. Shhh,” which sounds soothing, but does not soothe him.

I try: “Sweetie. Honey.” He doesn’t even pause.

I try: “Hai Au,” in every tonal combination I can muster. He will not react to his own name.

I try: “
Cún. Cún. Cún.
” The nickname Minh gave him: Puppy. You would think that it would do the trick. It does not.

His screams grow hoarse. I imagine his throat hurts, but if so, pain doesn’t stop him.

Martin stands up from his chair and walks over. “Want me to try for a while?”

I don’t. But Hai Au is already reaching over my shoulder, grabbing for him. What is with this child? I let him go.

The boy’s head falls onto Martin’s shoulder. The screaming stops. His breathing comes in little gasps.

“It’s just a change,” Martin says, trying to console me. “He needed a shift in momentum before he could stop. Theo was the same way.”

I sit down on the bed. After carrying him for forty-five minutes straight, I feel like a truck hit my side.

“He didn’t act like this at the orphanage,” I insist. “He didn’t act like this when he slept over the first night. He was upset, but not like this.”

“Do you want me to go upstairs and leave you two together?” “I don’t know.” I look at him. “What do you think?”

Hai Au hangs in Martin’s arms like someone who has given up entirely. Martin sways. He pats the baby’s back again and again, firmly and loyally, offering him something to depend on. Hai Au yawns. “Let’s wait a few minutes, see how he does.”

Despite my resentment, I’m grateful that Martin and I show goodwill toward each other now. We’ve managed tragedies together for twenty years, so it seems fitting that we respond to our personal situation (“tragedy” would be too strong a word) with even tempers and some degree of grace. In that respect, I didn’t doubt him. And from the moment he came downstairs this morning, he has been nothing but good-natured and helpful. I can’t say that the tension between us has evaporated entirely, but we have, at the very least, repressed it.